Travel Writing Tips: How to Write In an Interesting Way About Your Home Town

The first few months were so romantic. Dinner at all the best restaurants, drinks in all the coolest bars and moonlit walks along cobbled streets. But, over time, the relationship began to fizzle out. Without realising it, you’ve ended up spending your evenings in, only venturing out to pick up the occasional pint of milk from the local corner shop.

Sound familiar? It probably does if you’re a travel writer trying to write a piece about your home town. The day-to-day routine of living in a busy metropolis can turn the bright spark that made you fall for a city into a damp squib.

How can we rekindle the magic that once made our stomping ground so alluring? How can we write as if seeing the highlights of our city for the first time? Here are some tips from the experienced travel writers at World Words.

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Cultural Sensitivity and Travel Writing

After returning from a trip, travellers are usually consumed by an overwhelming desire to tell everyone about the amazing experience they have had. This is what a travel writer is paid to do in the most eloquent way possible. However, it can also be the hardest part to master when it comes to depicting and representing other cultures.

Cultural sensitivity should be paramount when writing travel content, but it is often sorely overlooked. Mariellen Ward of the Breathedreamgo travel blog has discussed the dangers of cultural imperialism (or the belief that your way of life is better) in travel writing, while photographer Bani Amor has criticised colonialism in travel literature.

As a graduate in Social Anthropology, and an experienced travel writer, I am aware of the complicated politics of writing about location, ethnicity and society. Although there is no one-size-fits-all phrasebook to help travel writers avoid all controversy, here are my top tips to help any well-meaning travel writer traverse this complicated terrain.

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Getting to Know Genoa, Italy: A City Destination Travel Guide for Expedia

Our team at World Words regularly write and edit travel guides for the leading online travel company Expedia. In fact, we create more Expedia travel guides than we can possibly list here (for example, just since the start of April, we’ve produced city and regional guides on the Netherlands, the USA, India, England, Japan and the Bahamas).

We might not be able to show them all, but we have picked out one of our recently-published destination guides. This month, our guide to Genoa, the capital of Liguria in northwestern Italy, was published on Expedia’s website. And to give you a taste of what you can expect in this stunning seaside city, we’ve included the overview below.

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Why You Should Avoid Writing About a Travel Destination Only from Memory

Great travel experiences create vivid memories. Ask any traveller about a particular trip, and they will recall many strong sensory memories, from the incredible sight of a migrating herd of elephants to the gentle sound of waves lapping at shore; the overpowering smell of a bustling spice market to the sweet taste of a freshly-picked mango.

However, memory is not as reliable as it first appears. Press the same traveller on the exact number of elephants, or the route they took through the spice market, and you may find they struggle to give you an answer. The fact is, no matter how vivid your travel memories seem, there’s always key information missing from your recollection.

As travel writers, we do as much as we possibly can to record everything we see and do during our trips – in fact, making notes on your travels is a very valuable habit for travel writers – but it is not possible to record absolutely everything. So how do you ensure the travel article, guide or web copy you write when you arrive home is 100% correct, providing accurate and valuable information for your readers? Here are four ways to always get it right…

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